Madame Bovary eBook

When the chemist no longer heard the noise of his
boots along the square, he thought the priest’s
behaviour just now very unbecoming. This refusal
to take any refreshment seemed to him the most odious
hypocrisy; all priests tippled on the sly, and were
trying to bring back the days of the tithe.

The landlady took up the defence of her curie.

“Besides, he could double up four men like you
over his knee. Last year he helped our people
to bring in the straw; he carried as many as six trusses
at once, he is so strong.”

“Bravo!” said the chemist. “Now
just send your daughters to confess to fellows which
such a temperament! I, if I were the Government,
I’d have the priests bled once a month.
Yes, Madame Lefrancois, every month—­a good
phlebotomy, in the interests of the police and morals.”

“Be quiet, Monsieur Homais. You are an
infidel; you’ve no religion.”

The chemist answered: “I have a religion,
my religion, and I even have more than all these others
with their mummeries and their juggling. I adore
God, on the contrary. I believe in the Supreme
Being, in a Creator, whatever he may be. I care
little who has placed us here below to fulfil our
duties as citizens and fathers of families; but I don’t
need to go to church to kiss silver plates, and fatten,
out of my pocket, a lot of good-for-nothings who live
better than we do. For one can know Him as well
in a wood, in a field, or even contemplating the eternal
vault like the ancients. My God! Mine is
the God of Socrates, of Franklin, of Voltaire, and
of Beranger! I am for the profession of faith
of the ‘Savoyard Vicar,’ and the immortal
principles of ’89! And I can’t admit
of an old boy of a God who takes walks in his garden
with a cane in his hand, who lodges his friends in
the belly of whales, dies uttering a cry, and rises
again at the end of three days; things absurd in themselves,
and completely opposed, moreover, to all physical laws,
which prove to us, by the way, that priests have always
wallowed in turpid ignorance, in which they would
fain engulf the people with them.”

He ceased, looking round for an audience, for in his
bubbling over the chemist had for a moment fancied
himself in the midst of the town council. But
the landlady no longer heeded him; she was listening
to a distant rolling. One could distinguish the
noise of a carriage mingled with the clattering of
loose horseshoes that beat against the ground, and
at last the “Hirondelle” stopped at the
door.

It was a yellow box on two large wheels, that, reaching
to the tilt, prevented travelers from seeing the road
and dirtied their shoulders. The small panes
of the narrow windows rattled in their sashes when
the coach was closed, and retained here and there
patches of mud amid the old layers of dust, that not
even storms of rain had altogether washed away.
It was drawn by three horses, the first a leader, and
when it came down-hill its bottom jolted against the
ground.